To put it neutrally, many investors are currently not enjoying looking at their own stock portfolio.

Red is the new green – at least those who are involved in equities in the short and medium term have to deal with sometimes large losses.

Accordingly, investing in shares is apparently not (anymore) hip for many.

A current survey by an online broker shows that only 27 percent of those surveyed are currently invested in shares and the general willingness to invest among Germans is not very high.

Only 38 percent want to invest their money in shares in the future.

It now seems to have vanished – the young, new lust for shares among Germans, which was caused by the corona pandemic and the lockdown, the resulting boredom on the sofa and the sometimes (too) quick purchase of small stock positions via app.

The current market situation shows who has understood what a commitment to solid stocks really is: a long-term investment and not a quick game.

After all, according to the broker survey, around 18 percent of all respondents understood this.

You want to invest your money in stocks over the long term with a time horizon of more than 10 years.

In view of the long-term development of the best-known stock market indices, such a strategy also makes sense.

This is shown, among other things, by databases such as the Dax yield triangle of Deutsches Aktieninstitut: the longer an investor is invested in shares, the more stable the average yield.

For many investors, the first bear market

The previous sentence sounds great, but many newcomers to the stock market have never experienced a situation like the one currently prevailing on the stock market.

Keeping calm is difficult for many, as the environment is anything but relaxed at the moment: the global economy is sinking, high inflation rates are causing interest rates to rise and the stock markets are marking new lows for the year.

But not all companies and investment classes are equally affected, as Carsten Gerlinger from Moventum AM reports: "Shares in selected sectors still offer potential," he says.

"Technology and growth stocks, on the other hand, remain under the spell of interest rate developments."

Gerlinger's assessment of American and European stocks also differs.

According to the market expert, Fed policy is dominating prices on the American stock market.

The valuations have meanwhile fallen significantly, but are still above the long-term average.

The growth segment in particular remains vulnerable in the event of a further increase in yields.

In the long term, the stock market prices are convincing

A look at the broad American S&P 500 index: the stock exchange barometer has increased by an average of around ten percent per year over the past ten years.

However, the S&P 500 has experienced a clear concentration of risk in recent years.

In contrast to the Dow Jones – whose price level is determined exclusively from the stock prices included (price-weighted index) – the stock market values ​​of the companies included are also taken into account when calculating the S&P 500.